Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to automatically generate more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can attract new traffic automatically as you begin adding new content on a regular basis to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting ever more competitive, it’s worth exploring any advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was going just fine in the widget assembly plant when all of a sudden, all machines stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, immediately went to the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for about 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny little hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap near the right-hand side of the box.
Immediately, everything started working again.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges may seem ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific results
- Which options you need to configure to make sure everything will function to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your web site, and various external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Sites & Solutions – Configuration
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external sites into your traffic network, content pointing back to your site gets automatically syndicated to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, your account details can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your web pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to other online applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, you can use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugins – Configuration
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Additional WordPress Features
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Tags And Categories
Tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be greeted with a 404 page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically bring traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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